Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Mental health campaigner, founder and CEO of the charity SAINE, and award-winning journalist who helped uncover the thalidomide scandal.
On the island
Eight records
Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52Favourite
Because my mother was a gifted pianist, but she didn't become a concert pianist, because she followed my father, who was a civil engineer, all over Africa. But wherever they went she had a piano carried with her. And her favourite composer was Chopin.
Danielle Licari and José Bartel
It brings back to me all that kind of heartbreak of when one's in one's twenties, waiting for someone to return, waiting for the telephone call that doesn't come, waiting for the letter that never arrives, and then gradually that bittersweet reconciliation to loss.
John Cleese and the Loving Prune Fool
It was so ridiculous that I would like that on my island because it would always make me laugh and remember those very exciting, as David Frost would say, super days.
Cheryl Milnes and Ileana Cotrubas
He always called me Traviata. He was a darling Traviata. And this particular duet is something that means a great deal to me.
It was a wedding gift that Sasha gave to his Norwegian wife, and I will never forget we were in the north of Norway, the gull was screaming, a storm brewing up, and he went to the piano and he played this song.
Ray Davies and the Crouch End Festival Chorus
I really love this Thank you for the days.
I've chosen this because it would bring Tom back to me and remind me of the way that we used to have these duets together.
I heard this on the radio, and I knew then that this sublime melody was going to give that sense of forgiveness and release, a true freedom.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:44When you have been championing a cause for thirty years, how comfortable is it to sit with me and have to talk about yourself?
Well, as you know, I was an investigative journalist and for many, many years a journalist, and one of the rules of journalism was that you didn't talk about yourself … So I'm not used to talking about myself, and I feel, I must say, frankly, rather nervous about disclosing some of the feelings and experiences.
Presenter asks
7:08How did you get on at school in Surrey?
I did all right at school. I was very, very keen on poetry. And in fact, before I'd been at school in Surrey, when I was in Africa, I think I was six years old. I remember that I learnt the whole of the rhyme of the ancient mariner. The whole of it? Yes, I think it's a hundred and forty stanzas. And I was taken with this water, water everywhere … so I then had to recite it to the class, and I did. And from then on I just learned poetry by heart, and I would be reading it under the bed clothes at night with a torch.
Presenter asks
9:37You won a place at the Royal Academy but you didn't stay. What happened?
I left school at fifteen to do music, and I was going to do singing as well. But I was put off … because I thought I was going to be Tosca or Isolde or Madame Butterfly. But I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I could only do a sobretto maid's part, and that was the most my voice could ever carry. So that was a bit of a dharma. And then with the piano, I thought, you know, I'd be playing my chopin, I'd be doing concertos, but I went to the academy and I just listened for a day to the competition and I fled.
The keepsakes
The luxury
a cocktail wardrobe with evening dresses, party shoes, and sparkly earrings
Then I'd go round, I'd find some champagne that some other castaway had left, and at sundown I would put on my musicals, take my champagne, and have a party.
Presenter asks
13:34Was there much time for personal life, for boyfriends and so on?
I think Kirsty We possibly shouldn't go down this road. … I got to know a great number of people because actually between the Frost programme series I was in charge of what was called religious programmes. … I made a list of all the people in Swinging London I wanted to meet. And then I would invent programmes round them … and I got to know a lot of people. Bernard Levin was one of the people I got to know. Robert Key. I just simply had a list and went through that and got to know very many of the figures of that era.
Presenter asks
22:25How did [research into thalidomide] affect you?
I felt very deeply for what they were experiencing. I believe and still believe that you can't write about people unless you know what's on their mantelpiece. unless you've been there … and some of that has, I guess, rubbed off on me … it's like having been a scrap tattooed on the inside. That somehow I've carried some of that darkness into me.
Presenter asks
30:51What do you put that optimism down to?
Scottish grit? Um stoicism. And I also think I hope with a little bit of elegance and a lightness of touch, and I think what's really important is to have a sense of humour and a sense of mischief.
“I remember the vast skies. I remember actually also the darker undercurrents that there were.”
“I learnt the whole of the rhyme of the ancient mariner. The whole of it? Yes, I think it's a hundred and forty stanzas.”
“All we have, really, is words and trust.”
“I think I also know a little bit about what it is to have that winter off the mine where nothing is moving where everything is paralyzed.”
“When this happened he wrote beautiful little cards and letters to me, which he would leave on my pillow … and when he couldn't write, what we did was I would dance with him, and we would dance a foxtrot, and then when that couldn't happen, I started singing … and he would join in … And I think those moments are so precious they're like jewels.”